With Xu Huai's instructions, Niu Er ran to hold a banquet with great enthusiasm.
Although the New Year is approaching, most people are sitting in the front office. If they have nothing to do, they come over first. After a while, the small study room is full of people, and Xu Huai takes everyone to the banquet hall; he also makes a special trip
Someone was sent to invite Xiao Chunyu, who served in the Selection of Front Army, to come over for a banquet.
Su Mung had always been ridiculed by Xu Pan for her fair and delicate appearance before. After this trip, she became much taller and taller, and her eyes revealed more perseverance——
Xiao Chunyu treated Su Miao with great enthusiasm. In addition to Su Miao, Xu Fang led his troops south to support and had contact with Xiao Chunyu for a period of time. At this time, Xiao Chunyu was also eager to know the current situation of the remaining Khitan troops.
Compared with the long journey south, Su Mung's return this time was much smoother.
It only took him ten days to set out from Dajianlu and cross Qionglai Mountain, where the key points were already under control.
Then we took a boat down the river from Longyou County in Jiazhou and arrived in Jiangling County in Jingzhou in less than half a month.
In Jingzhou, he asked Xu Wujiang and his sister Su Di to stay for two days, and then Su Di rode on horseback to the north. It was calculated that the whole journey did not take a full month.
At this time, it only takes two months to travel from Biyang to Dajianlu. About one and a half months is enough. This was unimaginable in the past when traveling from Dali. In addition to the longer distance, the journey from Dali is also longer.
There are many checkpoints to pass along the way, so it will take a lot of time.
Although there was no way to transport a large amount of materials to Dajianlu via Qionglai Mountain at this time, the Military Intelligence Department, with the assistance of brothers Zhu Zhi and Zhu Tong, generally controlled several key nodes of Qionglai Mountain Road and mobilized thousands of people to enter Qionglai Mountain to build the furnace.
Sihu City, the plank road, and the goods yard gave the remnants of the Khitan great confidence.
Many times, morale and people's hearts come from confidence in the future.
Dajianlu is a place with abundant water and grass, but before that it was a deadly place with enemies from both sides.
As long as the Qionglai Mountain Road is opened, Dajianlu will become a living place backed by the hinterland of the Central Plains, easy to defend and difficult to attack.
As long as the future is promising, the temporary difficulties will not be difficult to overcome. The remnants of the Khitan have been quite stable after withdrawing to Dajianlu, and they have plans to take root and operate in the long term.
The remnant Khitan army currently has no shortage of high-level generals and soldiers. The men and horses under Su Mung's expedition to foreign lands were somewhat exhausted and needed to be withdrawn in batches to rest and recuperate.
Of course, the pressure that the remaining Khitan troops will bear in the future will never be small.
Before Su Mang embarked on his return journey, Duogansi Tubo tribes had already held two joint conferences of sects and tribes at Buqu Temple. In the second joint conference of sects and tribes, in addition to the Huitu Sect, which had great influence in the Uizang area, the
In addition to the monk envoys, there were also envoys from the General Administration of the Military and Horse Capital in Hexi, Chihu.
Although the Tubo highlands are vast and have a harsh climate, and the Tubo tribes have been fragmented for more than two hundred years, it still takes a period of time before they want to be completely united and willing to submit to the iron hoof of the Chihu people and accept their rule.
Too short a time.
However, there are more than 60,000 Tibetan households in Duogansi Liugang area alone. If they unite first, they will soon be able to organize up to 20,000 Tibetan soldiers to attack Dajianlu.
The remnants of the Khitan decided to rely on Tuo Qionglai Mountain and take root in Dajianlu, and many strategies would inevitably change accordingly.
In the past, Khitan, especially the Yanyun area, was generally Hanized. City construction, farming, iron smelting, weaving and other industries were developed to a considerable extent, and Han people accounted for more than half.
After the Chihu people invaded the south, the people living in the cities in Yunshuo and other places, who generally accepted Sinicization and the vast majority of the Han people, basically followed Xiao Qian, Li Chulin and others to join the Chihu people, and their military strength continued to increase.
The main soldiers were soldiers; Yue Hailou's tribe was developed based on the Yingzhou Han army, and Cao Shixiong's tribe was based on the Shuozhou Han army.
Xiao Linshi, Shi Hai and others mainly led the vassal tribes under the jurisdiction of Qun Mu Si in the Yanyun area and the Khitan people who fled south from Zhongjing and other places. Later, they absorbed Xishan Hu and moved south to Qinzhou, basically maintaining a relatively pure
According to the nomadic tradition, the military force is mainly based on cavalry.
Now to take root in Dajianlu, Xiao Linshi not only needs to organize manpower to build stronger fortresses and develop farming, iron smelting, weaving and other industries, but also needs to organize a group of infantry troops with combat effectiveness.
Now the main force of Su Michi's tribe will be withdrawn in batches, but some generals will voluntarily join the Khitan and become part of the remaining Khitan troops.
Most of the thousands of troops who were transferred to Qionglai Mountain to build Sihu City this time were young men who were not married and were not only sons. Considering that the remnants of the Khitan army had lost a lot of young men in recent years, there were a large number of men.
The remaining young and middle-aged women, allowing them to be combined together will not only supplement the strength of the remaining Khitan troops, strengthen their infantry construction, but also promote further integration of the two sides.
If he had not had such a plan, Shi Zhen would not have been willing to send five or six thousand young soldiers to the Qionglai Mountains two to three thousand miles away to work for the remnants of the Khitan; in the early stage, the money and food invested by Beijing and Xiang in the Qionglai Mountains was equivalent to a
Send an expedition of three to four thousand soldiers and horses.
In the past two years, Beijing and Xiangzhou have been under great military pressure. Last year, the number of troops and horses was expanded to 300,000. Although the number of troops and horses was gradually reduced to about 200,000 after the spring of this year, military expenditures have not been reduced at all.
This has resulted in a significant stagnation in reclamation, construction of weirs and embankments in the past two years, and the farmland under the jurisdiction of the system has only increased from 5.5 million acres to 6 million acres.
The large-scale expansion of troops and horses not only increases military expenditures significantly, but also takes up a large amount of labor.
After the Jing bandit rebellion in Pingjingdong, the inspection departments, inspection departments, and villages of each capital recruited more than a million hungry people. The total number of young and strong people was only more than 400,000. At once, nearly half of the young and strong labor force was taken away to reclaim wasteland.
Of course, it was difficult to continue construction projects such as the construction of weirs, dikes, and villages that required a large amount of labor input; even if young and strong women were organized to work as much as possible, the most they could do was maintain the cultivation of existing farmland and maintain the supply of food.
The shortage of labor has also been transmitted to the manufacturing sector during this period.
In addition to incorporating hundreds of thousands of supply troops into active service, the defense lines in Rucai and other places also mobilized large-scale logistics forces to serve the war effort - in addition to the construction of a large number of fortifications, Jinqiao, and roads on the front line, Fangcheng Road, Qinchu
The dredging and management of the Old Road, the western line of the Wanluo Old Road and the Tangbai River Waterway are directly related to the communication between Biyang and the frontline war zone. Whether the transportation of men, horses and supplies can be smoother, a large number of civilians had to be recruited from Xiangyang, Nanyang and other places.
Although Beijing and Xiangzhou have a population of more than four million, such a high-intensity recruitment of young people and the production and supply of basic materials have to ensure the negative impact will naturally penetrate into all fields.
What's more, the consumption of military supplies is so huge that the production department cannot spend any extra money and food to invest in expanding reproduction for the time being.
After the annual output of wrought iron and refined iron materials in Beijing and Xiangshan exceeded 80 million kilograms at the end of last year, there was only a small increase this year; the number of new looms in Nancai, Biyang and other places has also assumed the important task of exporting commercial goods in recent years.
The growth rate of tea, porcelain, etc. is relatively limited.
Although the imperial court did not allocate additional money and food to Jingxiang in the past two years, the production department has repeatedly complained about poverty, and it is not without some benefits.
After several adjustments, the imperial court finally decided that other road supervisors and prefectures and counties would not levy excessive taxes on the goods exported from Beijing and Xiangzhou. The production department would collect taxes directly at the production areas to make up for the shortage of military resources; in exchange, all road supervisors and prefectures and counties would collect taxes directly.
Goods imported into Beijing and Xiangzhou are also exempted from all taxes, and only residence tax (business tax and city tax levied on merchants) are levied.
In addition, the imperial court also allowed the production department to purchase salt from Sichuan, Sichuan and other places, and all the additional taxes originally levied were used to make up for the lack of military resources - this is also consistent with the efforts of the production departments in Huaidong, Huaixi and Dongchuan.
direct relationship.
The salt tax revenue from various roads in Dai Viet is relatively intuitive and easy to control.
In addition, the salt tax mainly came from the sale of salt land, and the imperial court also ordered the salt sales land to severely crack down on illegal salt sales.
Other places are not qualified to bargain with the central government. Huaidong, Huaixi and Dongchuan three-way production companies want to directly control this part of the revenue, and do not want to change hands one more time to cause unnecessary "fire".
The West Qin Road did not get involved, mainly because the Gao family had already taken advantage of convenience to secretly smuggle smuggled salt from Rongzhou on a large scale, and actually had control of the salt tax revenue of the counties on the West Qin Road - each family also targeted this point,
Requires direct control over the salt tax revenue of the jurisdiction.
Although the salt tax and various commercial goods tax exemptions and over-tax exemptions can currently only increase the annual income of 600,000 to 700,000 yuan for the manufacturing department, in the long run it will be beneficial to the large-scale export of commercial goods from Beijing to Xiangzhou.
The temporary stagnant growth did not make everyone feel depressed. On the contrary, after the confrontation on the Rucai battlefield lasted for nearly a year and a half, the production department had clearly seen the limits of the Chihu people on the middle battlefield.
This is also the limit of the troops, horses and materials that the Chihu people can mobilize and invest in a single battlefield after conquering Khitan and Dangxiang.
However, it failed to shake the defense line of Beijing and Xiangzhou.
This also destined the Chihu people to delay for another three or four months. If there is no progress before the arrival of the new flood season, they will have to massively reduce their investment in troops and horses in the middle.
Otherwise, big problems will be exposed within Chihu.
Since the fall of Bianliang, the counties of Beijing and Xiangzhou have not been greatly affected, except for a few areas in northern Jingbei. Even before the emperor established Xiangyang as his capital, and under the strong organization of the production department, all aspects of material production have improved.
Significant improvement - organize material supply to the front line nearby, and the consumption of transportation and other aspects is much less.
However, the Chihu people organized such a large-scale offensive in the middle. Heluo and Hehuai, which had been devastated by the war, may not be able to supply half of the grain. It was necessary to recruit livestock and grain from as far away as the Bohai Sea and the Yinshan Mountains from the north and south to supplement the shortage.
In Hedong, Hebei, Guanshan and other places, the rebels have never completely stopped their activities, and they have never been completely eradicated by the Red Husbands.
Therefore, the Red Guards invested far more manpower and material resources than those in Beijing and Xiangxi to ensure the logistical supplies for the middle route, and it was not just the 300,000 horses on the front line.
Even after conquering Khitan and Dangxiang, and occupying most of the Central Plains, such a large-scale mobilization would inevitably make it difficult for the Chihu people to continue.
What's more, they can't see the hope of breaking through from the center, or even the hope of dragging down Jingxiang. If they grit their teeth and persist, what good will it do to them?